Best choice for Datastore filesytem

[mdenadal]

Hi,
I'm installing Proxmox Backup Server on a virtual machine.
The VM resides on a cloud PVE Cluster with ZFS storage.

I was wondering which could be the best filesystem for PBS datastores.
Nesting ZFS could lead to high memory overhead.

What do you think?

Thank you.
Massimo

 

[aaron]

I'd go with the simplest possibility in that case -> ext4 or xfs.
Unless you have a specific use case for ZFS inside the PBS VM, avoid it.

Ideally, the PBS would run on its own hardware for best performance.

 

[mdenadal]

Thank you for you answer.

Ideally, the PBS would run on its own hardware for best performance.

Yes, sure, but it's not so viable in a cloud setup.

So I'll go ext4. Thanks.

 

[carsten2]

I'd go with the simplest possibility in that case -> ext4 or xfs.
Unless you have a specific use case for ZFS inside the PBS VM, avoid it.

Ideally, the PBS would run on its own hardware for best performance.

Why should ZFS be avoided? If it comes to data integrity and realiability, it is much better than ext4, especially guarding aganst long time bit rot, where also the verification task of the backup cannot help. It only can detect, that data is corrept in a chunk, but it this chunk is used in several old backups, which you need, none of these backups an be restored. Remember the horror stories of people having backups, which cannot be restored.

So I would recommend ZFS.

 

[aaron]

Why should ZFS be avoided? If it comes to data integrity and realiability, it is much better than ext4, especially guarding aganst long time bit rot, where also the verification task of the backup cannot help. It only can detect, that data is corrept in a chunk, but it this chunk is used in several old backups, which you need, none of these backups an be restored. Remember the horror stories of people having backups, which cannot be restored.

So I would recommend ZFS.

If the VM is already running on a ZFS pool you get all those goodies. Running a COW FS on top of a COW FS will cost you some performance.